A timelapse of driving the coach just 63 miles from Gila Bend, Arizona to Phoenix, Arizona.
RV
Posts featuring the coach.
What’s the difference between an RV resort, RV park, campground, moochdocking, dispersed camping, and boondocking?
In my posts about places we’ve stayed, you may have noticed some patterns in the names, e.g. Shadow Hills RV Resort and Coyote Valley RV Resort, compared to Sonoran Desert RV Park and Orange Grove RV Park.
You may have wondered, what makes some an “RV resort”, and others an “RV park”? (Or you may not.)
Well, places can call themselves whatever they want, of course, but generally an RV resort will have nicer facilities and amenities. For example, a resort would typically have large paved sites, compared to gravel for a park; a nicer pool and clubhouse; and services like garbage pickup from the site, where you just put garbage bags out front and they collect it, vs taking it to a dumpster, and propane refilling, where they collect an empty propane cylinder and refill it for you, instead of lugging it yourself.
A comparison; here’s our site at Coyote Valley RV Resort:
vs our site at Orange Grove RV Park:
Both very nice, in different ways, but some differences.
Then there are other types, for example Thousand Trails San Benito Preserve I would characterize as a campground; a mixture of RV sites, tent sites, and cabins. A little more rustic than a typical RV park:
Similarly, state parks like Valley of the Rogue State Park I would also call a campground, also with lots of trees, and sometimes not full hookups (though in this case paved sites):
There are other situations, such as services like Harvest Hosts, where companies let people stay overnight in their parking lot, and Boondockers Welcome, where people let RVs stay for a day or two on their property. (These two services have now merged.) We tried the latter a while back, at Kevin and Julie’s Boondockers Welcome site; they often don’t have any hookups, but this was a nice one, with power and water provided:
A similar concept is “moochdocking”, where one stays on the property of a friend or family member. We did that at Mom’s place, with just 15 amp power:
There is also dispersed camping, where RVs can spread out on public lands, in designated sites. And boondocking, where RVs just stop anywhere (in authorized areas) on public lands. Those situations are dry camping, with no hookups. We haven’t done those yet, but plan to soon.
I hope this was interesting! A bit different than my usual posts.
Sonoran Desert RV Park
Our first stop in Arizona for a week, the Sonoran Desert RV Park in Gila Bend:
Campground map:
Our campsite was quite large; long enough to park the truck either behind or in front. And in fact enough room to park several other vehicles, if we had them. We left our truck hooked up for a couple of days until we were ready to go out, then parked in front, until the last day, when we hooked it up again for faster egress the following morning:
Paladin in the doorway:
Jenn and I did our traditional walks around the park; some of these pictures are from each of us. Starting with the Sonoran Desert RV Park sign:
The office:
Cacti:
Ranch house activity hall:
Pool:
“Solitary confinement”:
Patio:
Dog area:
Our campsite again:
Agave plant:
Quail sculpture:
Very nice sunsets here:
That factory is a Calgon Carbon facility, doing stuff with activated carbon.
Coach ground effect lights:
Our first full day here, the campground owner sent an email saying they’d have a Mexican food truck visiting that evening; we partook of their services for dinner. Convenient!
Another sunset:
Another night, we had some griddle burgers:
A nice campground; we’d stay here again.
Video: timelapse of coach driving from Indio, CA to Gila Bend, AZ
A timelapse of driving the coach 252 miles from Shadow Hills RV Resort in Indio, California to Gila Bend, Arizona. With music!
Travel from Indio, CA to Gila Bend, AZ
We departed Indio, California and headed to Gila Bend, Arizona. Another new state in our RV journey (we’ve been there before, but not driving).
Here’s the map route; 252 miles, a four or so hour drive in our coach. (That marker in the middle is where we’ll be spending the holidays.)
The first step for a travel day is to load up the truck bed with the outdoor stuff; it’s quite full, with chairs, rug, griddle, fire pit, propane tank, cleaning equipment, and other stuff. But great to have that extra storage:
Hills and part of the Colorado River aquaduct:
Paladin:
Being passed by another RV:
Date palm trees:
Arizona state line sign:
Welcome to Arizona sign:
Arizona centennial sign:
Quartzsite and Phoenix sign:
One of the first sightings of cacti:
Love’s fuel stop:
Yes, that top number is dollars; $295 for almost 69 gallons of diesel (nice)… less than half our tank capacity (150 gallons). Though we get a discount off that via our fuel card:
Desert:
Paladin:
Sitting in his box on the counter:
More cacti:
Stay tuned tomorrow for a timelapse dashcam video (with music!).
Toilet flush switch replacement
Our coach has two toilets; an electric gravity toilet in the mid bath (that spins a ball to dump straight down into the black tank), and an electric macerating toilet in the rear bath (that uses a bunch of water to pump the waste forward to the black tank).
The mid-bath toilet has a lever on the side of the toilet: pull up to add some water (to help flush solids), and push down to flush.
However, while adding water worked fine, flushing became unreliable. Sometimes it’d work immediately, sometimes one would have to hold the lever down for several seconds.
I researched the unit, and determined that the flush switch was likely the fault. So I ordered a replacement.
Here’s the switch behind the toilet, after I pulled the insulating covers away from the pins. This switch is toggled upwards to flush by the rotation of the lever, or downwards to add water:
The aforementioned lever:
I pulled the wires off the pins of the old switch, and tried connecting to the replacement switch (hanging down); it worked perfectly:
I wore my headlamp to see behind the toilet:
Having determined that the new switch worked, I worked on removing the old switch. It was mounted to the porcelain toilet with three screws under the handle:
Getting those screws out and back in again was the hardest thing, since the toilet was so close to the wall. I tried my drill with an angle bit, but it was too close for that, too:
I managed it by unscrewing the hard way — holding a screw bit in pliers, for leverage:
(I need to get a short screwdriver!)
Another look at the switch:
Replaced the handle; it works!
An assortment of tools for this repair:
It was very satisfying to fix this. Things break in even the best RVs; they’re an earthquake on wheels. Over time I’m sure I’ll build up new skills in repairing and modifying things, just like I did in the homestead. Just a new set of skills.
Shadow Hills RV Resort
Our last stop in California before heading into Arizona for the rest of the year, Shadow Hills RV Resort in Indio, down the road from Palm Springs:
Resort map:
Our campsite, before Jenn brought the coach over; it’s a back-in site, with another coach backed in behind. A fairly common style, and not too bad, since the back of the other coach is effectively a privacy wall. Plus these sites have nice large hedges:
Our truck and coach in the site:
Jenn in the campsite. We also just bought a propane fire pit (just in time to head into even hotter weather), and cushions for our zero gravity chairs:
The office:
While doing my traditional walk around the resort, I spotted a hot air balloon off in the distance:
This resort has a couple of ponds, with ducks in one; it always makes me happy to see ducks:
Hills in the background, a pond in the foreground, and a glimpse of our coach in the middle:
Two ponds:
Seating areas:
More pond angles:
Stream and bridge:
Ducks and pond:
Bees! We were amused by this sign:
Pond and Airstream trailers, available for rent:
A cabin, also available for rent:
Pool area, that’s actually open:
Horseshoes, and our coach beyond:
We put out our awning to shade our chairs:
Me editing a timelapse video outside on my MacBook Pro:
Video: timelapse of coach driving from Bakersfield, CA to Indio, CA
A timelapse of driving the coach 225 miles from Orange Grove RV Park in Bakersfield, California to Shadow Hills RV Resort in Indio, California. With music!
Travel from Bakersfield to Indio, CA
We departed the Orange Grove RV Park in Bakersfield, California, and headed to Indio, California (near Palm Springs).
Here’s the map route; a six hour drive in our coach. The default route was down CA-395 to I-15, but when examining the route, I saw very heavy traffic just before I-15 reached CA-138, so we decided to take a different route to bypass the worst of that:
It was very foggy in the hills after Bakersfield:
But soon cleared up:
Paladin sat on the kitchen counter again most of the time, except a few times when he came forward to say how he didn’t enjoy travel days:
Hills and wind turbines:
Flat desert highway:
Not so flat desert road, with lots of dips, plus Joshua trees:
Interesting rock formations:
The aforementioned heavy traffic on I-15 after merging from CA-138; we missed the worst of it:
Hills:
More wind turbines; going for quantity rather than size:
Out destination, the Shadow Hills RV Resort entrance:
Stay tuned for a timelapse video of this drive, with music!
Orange Grove RV Park
Our next RV park was Orange Grove RV Park in Bakersfield, California:
Here’s the park map:
This campground is literally in an orange grove, with orange trees between each site:
Paladin watching me from his dash bed:
The orange trees were full of fruit, though not quite ripe yet:
Campsite:
A nice thing about (some) pull-through sites is we didn’t need to unhook our truck when pulling into the site. In fact we left the tow bar connected overnight:
The campground was rather empty during the week, before the weekend campers arrived:
Rather than a central septic system, they had a truck pump out multiple systems around the park; a bit unusual, in my experience so far:
The pool was closed for the season:
A fun rustic-style maintenance building:
Decorations:
So many rows of orange trees:
A full moon and campfire:
Paladin on his dash bed:
